Nature's Warrior PrC Choices

[Wednesday Boy]

Hi ENWorlders,
I have a Shapeshifting Variant Druid who has levels of the Nature's Warrior PrC (C. War.). Every other level you get a special ability for when you're Shapeshifted (the DM said it could work for Shapeshifting even though it's written just for Wild Shape) and for my first one I took Wild Growth: Gain Fast Healing 1. I'm trying to figure out what I want for my other two special abilities and I have it narrowed down to:
Armor of the Crocodile: +(Class level, 5 levels max) bonus to your Natural Armor
Claws of the Grizzly: +3 damage with natural weapons
Earth’s Resilience: Gain Damage Reduction 3/-
Wings of the Hurricane: When in Avian or Air Elemental form, +30’ flying speed & maneuverability improves by one category.

Any thoughts on what I should go for? I'm leaning towards Wings of the Hurricane for extra mobility and Armor of the Crocodile to help out my AC. (If it helps any the rest of the group is a Paladin and a Fighter/Paladin/Kensai and a Cleric and a Rogue or Scout are going to join the group soon.)

Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[Folly]

Armor of the Crocodile is awsome. I am curious why you are not considering the grapple ability. A +4 on your grapple checks and a constrict it is a pretty solid ability.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Armor of the Crocodile is awsome. I am curious why you are not considering the grapple ability. A +4 on your grapple checks and a constrict it is a pretty solid ability.

Mainly because the Shapeshifting variant forms don't come with Improved Grapple automatically. So in order to make use of that ability I'd have to use my own feats to take both Improved Unarmed Combat and Improved Grapple.

 

[Folly]

It functions off of Improved Grab, not Improved Grapple. This still limits when it can be used, but the forms with Improved Grab tend to be the better options for combat. If you can manage getting Improved Grapple.... that is just icing on the cake.

 

[blargney the second]

What's your MO?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Does your group use C. Divine or Spell Compendium? Do your combats usually end in 5 rounds or less? If the answer to both those questions is yes, you might want to undo that wild Growth choice. Wands of Lesser Vigor with 50 charges can be had for a mere 750 gp (curing 11 hp over 11 rounds out of combat, same rate as Wild Growth), and if you're not even curing 5 hp a round in combat, you're not really benefiting much from it.

Armor of the Crocodile is the best if you plan on going 4-5 levels into the class. Wings is good if you take your flying form alot. It's a shame...your group has both a cleric and a druid, as well as two paladin guys (thus lots of healing, I assume), and most of the prestige class's best benefits are defensive...

 

[moritheil]

The ability to turn into water and move freely used to be pretty popular, but MIC has made short teleportation dirt cheap.

Frankly, of those options only Armor and Wings seem remotely relevant. An additional 3 damage per hit is not going to make or break you either way by the time you have several levels in a PrC.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

It functions off of Improved Grab, not Improved Grapple. This still limits when it can be used, but the forms with Improved Grab tend to be the better options for combat. If you can manage getting Improved Grapple.... that is just icing on the cake.

Ah, good catch. So that actually completely negates that option because none of the Shapeshifting forms have Improved Grab. (If you've never seen the Shapeshifting rules you basically add a template to your regular stats for your different forms. You don't get to take the form of any MM animal. And Imp. Grab is never a bonus feat for any of your forms.)

 

[Wednesday Boy]

What's your MO?

This is the first time I've played a Druid in 3.x, so I don't have a very set MO. Up to this point we had no Cleric and one of our Paladins is very low level, so I've been the healer. And I usually take a wide range of spells since we don't have a wizard (often an offensive spell, some buffing spells, some defensive spells and a battlefield control spell). And while the Paladins are great melee heavy hitters I like getting into combat too. I definitely don't have enough of a battle strategy to be the CoDzilla that everyone talks about and I'm not really looking to be that. The one Druidy thing that I don't often use are summoning spells. The chore of having to know the summoned creatures' stat blocks well turns me off to summoning.

Does that help any or is it rambling drivel?

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Does your group use C. Divine or Spell Compendium? Do your combats usually end in 5 rounds or less? If the answer to both those questions is yes, you might want to undo that wild Growth choice. Wands of Lesser Vigor with 50 charges can be had for a mere 750 gp (curing 11 hp over 11 rounds out of combat, same rate as Wild Growth), and if you're not even curing 5 hp a round in combat, you're not really benefiting much from it.

Armor of the Crocodile is the best if you plan on going 4-5 levels into the class. Wings is good if you take your flying form alot. It's a shame...your group has both a cleric and a druid, as well as two paladin guys (thus lots of healing, I assume), and most of the prestige class's best benefits are defensive...

We do have C. Divine and Spell Comp. available. Combats are usually extended periods of time where we make an excursion into an area and stay until the evil doers are taken care of or we find what we needed.

Because lots of the PrC's benefits are defensive is why I was leaning towards the Wings. That'd mix things up some by increasing my mobility.